


Chaos Theory

by woozifi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Humor, Light Angst, M/M, Outer Space, Romantic Comedy, Space AU, and i only wish my writing was as poetically witty, except none of them are hitchhikers, think the hitchhikers galaxy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 02:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13261668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woozifi/pseuds/woozifi
Summary: Soonyoung and Wonwoo are two strangers travelling the galaxy for different reasons. In-between planetary tourist traps and the liminal spaces that are docking ports on the side of Interstellar Highways, the vast, meddling matchmaker of a universe brings them together far more than should be statistically possible.Soonyoung would provide the evidence for it, but he's bad at math.





	Chaos Theory

**Author's Note:**

> Winterstar2018 Prompt #016: space travel au! soonwoo meet each other far more than should be statistically possible for two strangers in a galaxy far far away. in between impromptu dinner dates and getting drunk at the space port, maybe asking for this stranger's number won't be a bad idea.
> 
> I was so happy to write this prompt! I just had this image in my head the moment I read it. Thank you to whoever put this one out there, I snatched at it with my grabby little gremlin claws so damn fast, and this is what came out of it. Enjoy!

The first time they meet, it’s on the planet Proserpina, about twenty-five million light years away from Earth, right in between Central Titus’ famed outdoor theatre performances and Soonyoung’s fourth drink.

Central Titus has always been Proserpina’s tourist city. Any space-faring traveller worth their salt could tell you it’s not just a city that never sleeps—it’s a city that doesn’t let _you_ go to sleep either. All the streets as far as the eye (or two or six) can see demands attention, flashing with neon lights in every colour you can think of, and even some that you can’t. The roads are a brilliant blue that make your shoes glow like undersea jellyfish, always thick with crowds of tourists and vacationers at any moment of the day. Aliens and humans alike of various genders and sexualities pose in revealing clothing, beckoning those brave enough into rose-curtained burlesque show domes. The lights of the cars zipping overhead in an ever-constant stream look like the time-bending properties of warp fields, of brilliantly bright comet tails.

The first night Soonyoung landed on-planet was the hardest. He thought Earth, with all its overcrowded buildings and neon-fucking-everything, was bad. This was an entirely different level of distracting. He got so overwhelmed by the fifty things he was trying to concentrate on at once that, instead of going out to enjoy the sights like he planned, he stayed back in his hotel room to lie down and rest.

Turns out, the lights and fireworks and music outside of his window are impossible to ignore. He might as well walk into a nightclub, curl up into a ball in the middle of the dance floor, and try to fall asleep there.

After a couple sleepless nights of trial and error he finds himself here, in one of the hundreds of bars that Central Titus boasts, drinking heavily diluted Cotta Liqueur so that it can help him fall asleep through the din. The concentrated form of this stuff could burst open a human’s liver with one sip, but when filtered through gallons of water and just a little bit of raw sugar, it’s a pleasantly sweet drink that gets Soonyoung hammered in no time.

The music is loud and generic, ringing in his ears, and he’s grateful that the stools at the bar counter are turned away from the flashing beams over by the dance floor. He’s busy trying to determine if he should order one more drink or maybe spare himself the future hangover in the morning, when someone takes the seat next to him.

Soonyoung doesn’t notice who it is at first, too focused on the fact that his fingernails look like they’re multiplying in his swimming vision. Then he hears an awkward cough and finally turns his head.

Surprisingly in a place like this, it’s a familiar and almost welcome sight; another human, with round ears close to his skull and the usual number of eyes and hands and everything. It might be the Cotta talking, but Soonyoung finds something about him strangely attractive. Maybe it’s the old-fashioned, round, wire-rimmed glasses he’s wearing, an ancient Earthen relic that Soonyoung stares at shamelessly—a bit too much to be comfortable, but he _did_ drink a lot of Cotta and it likes to mess with his impulse control.

“Didn’t think I’d find another human around here,” the stranger says, with a deep voice like the hum of rumbling machinery and a small, awkward laugh. He fiddles with his portable personal holo-interface with long, fidgety fingers, spinning the small, holographic screens with practiced precision, like messing around with the porta-phi is some sort of nervous habit. Soonyoung spies what looks like screens of messages, emails, photographs, video chats, credit accounts, all flipping by too fast to keep up. “It’s, uh, nice to see a friendly face.”

“You just walked into a bar,” Soonyoung says with a snort, and to his credit his words sound only a _little_ sloshed. Just a little. The stranger is wearing a long-sleeved grey shirt, simple and bland compared to the bright, eclectic fashions of Central Titus, and he has a mop of messy dark hair that looks like it’s in desperate need of a cut. “If you got the credits to spend, everybody in here’s your friend.”

He hesitates, decides this acquaintance is worth getting to know, and sticks out his hand. “I’m Soonyoung. Kwon Soonyoung.”

“Jeon Wonwoo.” They shake hands. Soonyoung’s palms are damp with the condensation from his multitude of drinks. Wonwoo’s are cool and dry. “So, what brings you out to Proserpina, Soonyoung?”

“The usual. Voyages. Travels. Hitchhiking. On the run from the law.” Wonwoo’s expression flickers with concern for a moment, and Soonyoung grins. “I’m kidding about the last one. Really, I’m just your average, everyday, run-of-the-mill Earth kid.”

“Run-of-the-mill?” Wonwoo looks confused, half-smiling as though he thinks Soonyoung is either making fun of him or too drunk to make sense. His glasses are slowly sliding down his nose from the sweat generating in the steamy air of the bar. This is the kind of place where you can get drunk by just breathing in the fumes.

“Yeah. Never heard that phrase before, human?”

“Not particularly.” Wonwoo shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “I’m a cabin baby. Er, that’s what we called the spacers, the kids born on our ship.”

“You’re a _spacer?”_ Soonyoung leans in closer, instantly excited. “Have you ever been on Earth, then?”

“Never. Spent the first two or three years of my life on a ship—the _Thousand Voyages,_ to be precise. My parents were part of the exploration team for the Sixer star cluster that colonized New Terren. This is my first time going off-world since.”

“Wow, no shit.” As one of the newest species to discover FTL travel and join the Intergalactic Alliance, humans had a lot of catching up to do to get even close to competing in the space race. Within Soonyoung’s lifetime alone, three new planets had been colonized by the Earthen Union to establish a larger human population in the galaxy: New Terren, Old Toronto (no idea where that one came from), and Dirtball (which _has_ to be a joke, but that’s what everyone calls it, so apparently an entire sub-population of humanity will be born and grow up in a planet called _Dirtball_ now). New Terren was settled when Soonyoung was barely a toddler—if Wonwoo spent some time as a baby on the _Thousand Voyages,_ that must mean he is around Soonyoung’s age.

The bartender finally reaches them and mutters something in a voice too guttural and exhausted for Soonyoung’s translator chip to pick up properly. He can only assume they’re asking what Wonwoo wants to drink.

He leans in and shouts over the music, “Get this guy here whatever he wants. It’s on my tab.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Wonwoo says quickly, looking both embarrassed and pleased. “I was just going to get—I dunno—water or something.”

“This is Central Titus, my friend, the only liquid they’ve got running around here is of the alcoholic variety.” He turns to half-yell at the bartender again. “Hey, get us two Cottas, the human kind!” The bartender rolls their numerous eyes and slithers away, Soonyoung calling after him, “The _human_ kind, mind you! That’s very important! It has to be _the human kind!”_

“I think he heard you the first time,” Wonwoo says with barely concealed amusement. His glasses tip dangerously close to the tip of his nose, and he jams his middle finger against the silvery frame’s bridge to push it back up again.

Soonyoung is more than a little fascinated.

“What’s with the glasses?” he asks, still sort of yelling. Partly because of the music in the bar, partly because of the Cotta Liqueur soaking the insides of his ears.

Wonwoo shakes his head with a small smile, like that’s the only thing he can do when facing a particularly drunk human stranger while still sober.

“Need them to see things up close,” he answers.

“ _Weird._ No cybernetics or nothin’?”

Soonyoung, like most Earthen humans, had cybernetic sensory implant surgery when he was a teenager. His vision and hearing will be perfect forever—or at least until something happens to him that’s vicious enough to knock the implants loose in his brain.

“My parents are kind of hippies. Why do you think they left Earth to study exo-agriculture in a different star cluster?” The bartender slides them both glasses filled with bright green liquid. Wonwoo picks his up and examines it, frowning slightly, and even adjusts his glasses to squint at its contents. Soonyoung finds that _hilarious._ “I’ve never had Cotta before. New Terren just stuck to the human stuff.”

“You’re in luck, then.” Soonyoung lifts his drink up, his intent clear, and they clink their glasses together. “I mean, unless the bartender forgot to get the human stuff, in which case our intestines might melt. Cheers.”

He downs half of his in a single gulp.

“You’re a man living on the edge, Kwon Soonyoung,” Wonwoo says with an entertained snort, but he looks apprehensive as he sips his own drink, grimacing at both the strong aftertaste and the potential death that might come with it.

Nothing happens, and after he decides he’s not dead, he takes another sip. “This isn’t bad.”

“Right?” Soonyoung slurs, everything going lopsided for a few seconds before blurring back to normal. “Damn if it doesn’t hit you hard, though.”

Wonwoo smiles at him, a real big smile that stretches his lips tight over his teeth and causes a little crinkle to form high up on his nose, jostling the frame of his glasses. Soonyoung stares and suddenly has the urge to grab him and kiss him, if at least to taste the Liqueur left over on Wonwoo’s lips. But that feeling passes almost as soon as he thinks about it, and he flushes it out with the rest of his Cotta.

“It looks like it hit you a little too hard,” Wonwoo says, smile still in his voice even when it fades from his face. “You should probably go home or something. You’re swaying.”

Soonyoung wants to argue—wants to stay and talk some more, wants to know more about Wonwoo’s life living on a different planet other than Earth, spending his infant years in the pressurized hull of a ship—but the entire bar is tilting heavily to one side and his brain has turned to a mushy paste.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” he gurgles. “I should—sleep, or drink some more, or something.”

Wonwoo laughs and gives him a small wave as Soonyoung struggles off his stool. “No, the first option was good. Choose the first option. See you around, Kwon Soonyoung.”

It’s a ridiculous thing to say. The likelihood of the two of them meeting again is close to zero. Soonyoung’s only staying on Proserpina long enough to see the sights, visit a couple of gift shops, maybe take a picture with the infamous Six-Armed Goddess of Death statue in Central Titus’ main square. He’s here until the novelty of the city wears off—or maybe when the lights and music prove to be too much to handle—and then he’s off again.

When the whole galaxy is opened up to you, possibilities become both infinite and unattainable. The sheer multitude of star clusters and planets and people that Soonyoung will meet in his lifetime far outweighs the chance of seeing this one, single human again through sheer luck.

The two of them know that, and they give each other secret grins at the absurdity of such an outdated statement. _Goodbye forever,_ their smiles seem to say. _There won’t be a next time, but the memory is good while we still have it._

He stumbles back to his hotel. It isn’t until he collapses face-first into his pillow, head pounding with what is sure to be a classic Cotta hangover, trying to drown out the bass-blasting synth beats and shouts and cheers forty floors below, does he realize he left without paying for Wonwoo’s drink—or, for that matter, any of his own.

 

One humanly-perceived week later, Soonyoung is rubbing sleep away from his eyes a couple light years to the left of Proserpina, in a space port off the coast of Interstellar Highway Gamma-Six, when he runs into him again.

“Hey,” he hears someone say, “don’t I know you from somewhere?”

The port only has a few stragglers at such early hours. They’re mostly aliens who function on a different biological circadian rhythm than humans, or travelers that are stupid enough to take early flights like him. Soonyoung looks up from his porta-phi, waiting in queue for his ticket, and comes face-to-face with a familiar head of shaggy dark hair. This time he’s without any glasses, wearing a loose beige sweater that covers his arms down to his knuckles, loose enough at the neck to reveal the sharp ridges of his collarbones.

“No way. Jeon Wonwoo?”

“Kwon Soonyoung.”

They grin at each other, both in disbelief but nonetheless pleased to meet again, and shake hands. It’s weirdly reminiscent of their first meeting. Soonyoung’s relieved to find that his palms are much less damp than they were last time. Now that he’s completely sober, it’s weird to see Wonwoo again in such clarity and clear-headedness, like he’s only just realizing this is an actual person instead of a hazy, booze-induced dream.

“What brings you to Amhlaidh Station?” Wonwoo asks, voice still deep enough to echo the bass of that head-pounding club music all those days ago.

“I could ask you the same thing.” What a crazy coincidence, Soonyoung thinks, as he finally gets his ticket, the information feed transferring to his porta-phi (the glowing green lines that stretch out and connect to carve out his 3D passport photo make him look kind of hideous, cheeks bloated and eyes dead—he hopes Wonwoo can’t tell what the picture looks like from his angle). Out of all the space ports in every interstellar highway in every star system and cluster in the entire galaxy, they run into each other exactly here. “I’m going off-port right now, actually. This was just a quick stop for lunch.”

Wonwoo looks like he might want to ask where Soonyoung is going, but at the last second he only says, “I … you made me pay for your drinks. On Proserpina.”

“Oh—shit, I did. Oh god, I’m so sorry. I was really drunk.” Soonyoung feels his cheeks heat up, embarrassment crawling along his spine and ears. His internal timepiece chip keeps telling him he has six minutes before his ship takes off. That’s not a lot to set things right. “Let me make it up to you. Um …”

“It’s fine,” Wonwoo says, smiling hesitantly. His porta-phi flickers on and off by his wrist with the uncertain twitching of his fingers. “You can, uh, treat me next time.”

Again, a ridiculous statement that doesn’t make sense under the sheer vastness of galactic space. There is no “next time” when it comes to two strangers who run into each other unplanned.

And yet, here they are. Light years away from where they first met. Running into each other all the same.

Somehow, Soonyoung doesn’t feel like “next time” is such an impossibility.

A pleasantly-voiced VI system sends a PA warning through the space port’s intercoms, its gentle voice echoing across the halls. It reminds them that the _Torcall 998_ is leaving in five minutes, and for all passengers to please make their way to Gateway Dolag to embark.

Soonyoung turns back to Wonwoo, oddly reluctant to step away. He needs to be on this ship. It’s the only one that will take him even close to the Anu Cluster, and this is the last flight of the day. He doesn’t want to rent a tiny hole of a room to sleep in overnight, not in a shitty old port like this, with the malfunctioning cleaning bots clanking away and the smell of engine fuel seeping into his clothes.

There’s something in him that’s tugging insistently, though, telling him to stay. Telling him that coincidentally running into Wonwoo isn’t likely to happen a third time. And the more Soonyoung sees him, the more intrigued he is—the more disappointed he is at the idea that he might not get lucky a third time.

“I’ll see you around, I guess,” he says, forcing a smile on his face.

Wonwoo smiles too, but it’s a dimming star, not as bright as before. He gives Soonyoung a half wave and watches him hurry to the gateway.

Soonyoung turns back for just a half-second before he’s out of sight—not enough to change his mind, or to say anything more, but enough for him to realize that since the last time they met, Wonwoo’s programmed his porta-phi to be a brilliant shade of orange, so vivid and eccentric compared to the rather understated man himself.

It somehow suits him.

 

Erra’Ukur is a dangerous, magnificent river. Soonyoung’s more interested in admiring it with his eyes than with his ears, only half paying attention to the Arah tour guide as she rattles on. Her accent is thick and heavy with the clicks and pops of her native language even through a translator chip.

The Arah, she says, worship the very river itself due to the fact that it crosses their entire home planet of Shulsaga in one giant loop. The “waters of life” they call it, although in the Arahhian tongue it’s much, much harder for Soonyoung to pronounce. Their river-based mythology describes how they build their cities as close to Erra’Ukur as possible, how their children are blessed bathing in it, and upon an Arah’s death, they are placed in small boats to ride the waters to the afterlife.

Soonyoung lost interest in religion the moment he realized the universe was too big and complicated and ridiculous to be under the care of any one particular god or deity, so he scoffed a bit reading about their beliefs. That was until he came here in person. Now, on a giant golden gondola with a beautiful, intricately carved Arah river spirit as the figurehead, he can see why they would venerate a body of water, why they would hold it so sacred even after witnessing the wonders of space travel and cosmic insignificance. The river is so large he can’t see the banks on either side, where the sloping orange earth and winding docks end.

It feels more like an ocean.

The water is a blue-grey, choppy with sharp rocks and vicious river creatures the Arah call _asag_ , both things that the gondola’s protective field disintegrate if they get close enough to try and injure the keel. Soonyoung shivers when he spies the angular fins of several _asag_ lurking menacingly close to the surface of the water, glassy eyes staring up at the boat. Unblinking. Watchful. Waiting.

Soonyoung pretends he doesn’t notice them and tries to enjoy the scenery. After a couple more minutes of the _asag_ looking directly in his direction (can they _see_ him up here?) and him fidgeting uncomfortably in his seat, he decides it’s time to move.

He passes rows upon rows of tourists armed with binoculars and Shulsaga travelling brochures, the tour guide’s voice growing fainter as he moves up towards the front of the ship. When he reaches the last sector, quiet and peaceful, he spies a startlingly familiar head of messy hair sitting alone near the front, up by the narrowest part ending at the figurehead. He’s poring over the travelling brochure. Something about the way his shoulders slouch causes Soonyoung to do a double take.

It couldn’t be. Could it?

His heart starts to race, but Soonyoung wills himself to act casual. He slowly saunters up the rows before taking a seat right next to Wonwoo. The page Wonwoo’s poring over is the one about Arah cuisine, and admittedly looks rather mouth-watering. He doesn’t notice Soonyoung at all.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks cheekily. Yes. Sounds casual and suave. Very good, Kwon Soonyoung.

Wonwoo starts a little, but to Soonyoung’s dismay he doesn’t look nearly as shocked as he should be when he looks up at him. He’s wearing contacts today to help him see, his eyes a brilliant green like the slimy algae growing on the _asag’s_ backs (not the most romantic comparison Soonyoung’s made before, but whatever). Soonyoung wonders how much more different cybernetic contact lenses can be to cybernetic surgery, except the fact that one is temporary and the other very much isn’t, but that’s not the kind of conversation he wants to have when his time with Wonwoo is so limited.

“Sure,” Wonwoo says with a small smile, far more casual and suave than Soonyoung. How does he do it?

Soonyoung settles in, trying to make himself comfortable. Wonwoo looks back down at the guidebook, the tiny little smile still remaining on his face. Warmth grows in the pit of Soonyoung’s stomach—not burning to the point of being painful or distracting, but small and pleasant.

“You know,” Soonyoung says slowly, wondering if this might sound too flirtatious. He doesn’t know if that’s a bad thing or not. He decides it doesn’t matter. “We run into each other a lot. You aren’t stalking me, are you?”

Wonwoo’s smile grows into a crooked smirk.

“I’ve had this trip planned for weeks,” he says, tapping a tune out along the smooth, heavy railing lining the side of the gondola. “Unless you got the documents to prove you also pre-booked a spot on this tour, I’d like to say that _you’re_ stalking _me.”_

Soonyoung doesn’t have any documents to prove it. Like every other idea that occurs in his life, his choice was an unplanned and spontaneous one. He only joined this tour because they had an empty spot, and he decided last-minute to take it rather than pig out in the restaurants by the winding docks.

He chooses to avoid the hole Wonwoo’s clearly trying to steer him towards and instead asks, “Do you know the statistical likelihood of two strangers meeting each other three times in different places in the galaxy?”

The gondola floats nice and easy down the river. They have at least two more hours before they reach their destination, a Shulsaga harbour that the travel brochure claims take the _asag_ and turn them into the best native stew in the world. Soonyoung’s not too sure about eating something that contains that many eyes, but hey, he’s willing to try. Wonwoo doesn’t look up from the book, but he’s clearly not focused on the letters anymore. The green in his eyes is mesmerizingly intense, but Soonyoung’s surprised to find he misses the simple cybernetics-less brown and the glasses.

Wonwoo hums a little in response, then says, “Not really. Enlighten me.”

When Soonyoung was ten, he wanted to be an astronaut. Or an astronomer. Something that had to do with stars, something that could take him off his boring home planet and see something great, _be_ something great.

That dream ended when he realized how much math and physics were involved.

“Man, fuck if I know. Not very goddamn likely, I’d say.”

Wonwoo muffles his laughter with the back of his palm, finally looking up from the brochure to glance back at him. Soonyoung feels extraordinarily pleased with himself.

“Is it weird?” Wonwoo asks, green eyes glinting with the heavy Shulsaga sun. “That we keep running into each other like this?”

It is weird. It is very, very weird that this keeps happening.

Soonyoung just can’t bring himself to care.

“You’re weird, I’m weird, weird things happen to weird people.” Soonyoung shrugs his shoulders and hugs his raincoat closer to his body, protect his clothes from the spraying water and mist and humidity that comes with sailing on the Erra’Ukur. “Why are you out here, though? Another adventuring traveler like myself?”

Wonwoo shakes his head, scoffing at Soonyoung’s self-proclaimed adventuring status. Soonyoung suddenly notices that Wonwoo’s hair is a bit damp from the mist, the condensation making it wet and heavy, hanging in front of his eyes. Exotic birds shriek far up above them, flying in clumps of exact odd numbers over their head.

“Vacation,” Wonwoo says. “I still live in New Terren, I’m, uh, actually an author. I was running out of inspiration, so I’m on paid vacation by my publisher—more or less—to visit a shitton of planets and write about them when I come back. What about you? Are you really just out here wandering the cosmos?”

“You’re an author?” Soonyoung asks, willfully ignoring his questions. “That’s so cool! Have I read anything of yours?”

It doesn’t look like he’s fooled Wonwoo for a second, but after a moment of hesitation Wonwoo only replies, with a patient and mildly embarrassed tone, “Probably not. My work is more for, uh, New Terrian consumption. I’m not well-known enough for publishing companies to sell my books cross-galaxy.”

“Well, gimme some titles. I’ll check them out.”

Wonwoo’s cheeks begin to turn a flustered sort of pink. “I-I mean—well, it’s, I’m sure you can find some downloadable ones on the extranet, if you search me up. But I mean—they aren’t that good.”

“I’m sure you’re a great author.”

Wonwoo looks more and more desperate to not talk about it anymore. “I’m—I’m getting there.”

He looks like he’s really about to clam up, so Soonyoung decides to temper his excitement. He doesn’t need Wonwoo to regret seeing him again. “That’s cool, that’s cool. Uhh, what about family? Are they cool with you going off-world? Mine threw a bit of a fit when I first left.”

Finally, there’s a spark in Wonwoo’s eyes again. He laughs, nose crinkling. “Just a bit?”

“Hey, I never claimed to be a mother’s ideal son or anything. You first met me getting shitfaced alone at a bar in _Central Titus_ , I think you can tell what kind of person I am. I’m easy like that.”

Wonwoo raises his eyebrows. There’s a sizzling sound, smoke rising from the opposite side of the gondola—one of the _asag_ must have gotten too close to the ship after all. The gondola rocks slightly from the force of it, then settles back into calmness once more. “I think you give yourself too little credit.”

“What, that I’m a better son?”

The green of his eyes glints off the sun. “No. That you think you’re easy to figure out.”

“I see.” Soonyoung thinks he might be dreaming, dipping into a deep sleep, rocking in somebody’s arms. There’s a sense of calmness, of tranquility to their conversation. Talking to Wonwoo is like sinking into a warm bath. His palms tingle. “That’s funny.”

“Is it?”

“That you think I’m such a mystery? Of course.”

“You’re a more complicated man than you think.”

“Maybe you’re just complicating me.”

“Or maybe you’re trying to uncomplicate yourself.”

Soonyoung grins, and Wonwoo grins, and for a moment electricity pulses beneath Soonyoung’s fingertips and he wonders if maybe, just maybe, he can lean over and kiss Wonwoo and Wonwoo won’t mind.

But that moment passes, after a few beats, and he’s only left feeling flustered and confused.

“What does your brochure say?” he abruptly asks.

Wonwoo blinks rapidly then looks down at the folded, glowing screen in his hands, as if surprised it’s still there. “Oh. Um, a lot of religious history. Like, a lot. They really love their rivers around here. They’ve got, um, a section on local cuisine, too. And a weirdly large chapter on social norms and etiquette. Apparently, if you raise your hand too high above your head, you’re insulting someone’s mother.”

Soonyoung immediately does just that, raising his hand like an overeager child in a classroom, and Wonwoo laughs and shoves his arm back down.

“You up for a good old-fashioned restaurant hop when we land?” Soonyoung asks, eager to spend more time with the intriguing spacer. “Because, not gonna lie, but I’m not ready to leave Shulsaga until I’ve tried every single thing they showed in that brochure.”

“Even the—” Wonwoo glances back down at the brochure to check, “—roasted _asag_ liver?”

“It’s all about trying new things, man! Come on, you can’t say you’ve been to a new planet until you can say you’ve tried the weirdest tourist thing they can offer. This is coming from a guy who visited that alien strip club scene in Errada Lima. It’s, like, a badge of honour.”

Wonwoo pretends to think about it. “Is this how you’re gonna pay me back for those drinks on Proserpina?”

“Shit. Completely forgot about that.”

He shakes his head in mock disappointment, sending a tiny splatter of water droplets into Soonyoung’s raincoat-covered lap. “Of course, you completely forget about paying me back the moment we’re on a different planet. Tell me, do you leave your ridiculously pricy tabs for every human you randomly meet in a bar?”

Soonyoung winks at him. “Only the cute ones.”

 

As it turns out, roasted _asag_ liver tastes like shit. Well, not exactly. Soonyoung compares it to the sensation of charcoal and bittermelon and roasted peppers trying to wriggle its way back out of his mouth. Wonwoo laughs at him for being dramatic, up until Soonyoung shoves a forkful of it into his face and he takes a bite himself.

Sitting at the docks is far more appealing than rocking in the gondola. All the restaurants are open to the fresh air and built with copper-coloured pillars instead of walls, the thatched roofs stretching out and out and out, the tables placed so far on the docks that Soonyoung can practically feel the mist of the Erra’Ukur’s rocking waves spray against his legs. Wonwoo’s hair, apparently, dries into an absolute mess after getting wet. He sits across from Soonyoung, legs crossed, his dark hair fluffed up like the fuzz on a baby swan, the kinds Soonyoung used to feed bread to back on Earth.

Wonwoo is cautious. He gazes apprehensively at every new plate the Arah server sets down in front of them, hesitates before every mouthful. He stares at the menu with his cyber-green eyes narrowed with indecision, before eventually he orders a glass of scotch. Familiar, human, safe.

He’s also brave. At least, Soonyoung thinks so. He may pause and look nervous, but he tries every single dish. He may have ordered a human drink, but he doesn’t refuse tasting Soonyoung’s Shulsaga-native margarita, despite it dying both of their tongues an absurdly bright pink. He sticks his tongue out at Soonyoung, making him snort and nearly spit out whatever he’s got mashing between his teeth.

“Can you imagine what it must’ve been like for us humans a hundred years ago?” he says. He talks more after he’s had a few drinks, after the colour flushes his cheeks. He moves his hands around when he talks, accentuating his points with the twist of a wrist or the twirl of a bony finger. “Only ever staying on Earth, no chances to go somewhere else, no opportunities. Living an entire life without ever being able to see a planet like this. Imagine thinking you were the only life form in the galaxy. I mean, did they ever wonder? Did they ever look up at the stars?”

Soonyoung doesn’t need to imagine. South Korea was a spacecraft engineering industry, the entire country transformed into a massive factory town to design and produce the parts needed to send humans out into space for the Earthen Union.

Wonwoo was born up in the stars.

Soonyoung was born way, way down below, where the yellow-grey smog was so thick not even an apartment on the one hundred and seventy-fifth floor of a skyscraper could escape it. Where the rivers and ponds and lakes had to be encased in specialized glass domes so they wouldn’t pollute their water supply. It felt like humans were the only living creatures he ever knew. Down there, with the packed subways, and tired, grease-smeared faces, and black oil seeping out of factories and into the cracks in the sidewalks, staining roads with grid lines of squid ink and pitch, Soonyoung would look up at the stars and wonder.

“I think some of them would have looked up,” he eventually says. “Some wouldn’t.”

Wonwoo twists his mouth. He has an adorable mouth. “Why _wouldn’t_ they? I-I mean—there’s just so much out there.”

Soonyoung shrugs. “Who knows, man? Maybe that’s what they were scared of. Maybe they were too scared of what might be out there that they’d rather just stare at their shoes.”

Wonwoo shakes his head, puffy hair ruffling with the breeze. He looks utterly flabbergasted at the idea of someone being too afraid to even _wonder._ Soonyoung isn’t keen on poking at the idea much longer—he thinks he knows a bit too well what it might feel like, to be so terrified of feeling so small.

They watch the sun set, burning red over the horizon, the colour dying the river water a shade of vivid, unnatural purple, like the juiciest part of a grape. Wonwoo’s hair turns a rusty sort of auburn under the light, the tips of his eyelashes and eyebrows a smoldering, shadowy scarlet. Soonyoung’s hair probably looks the same, but he can’t help thinking that it looks extra-stunning in Wonwoo’s particular shade, like the rays of the sunset bent and formed itself specifically for him.

“You’re staring,” Wonwoo mutters. His cheeks are red, but it might just be the dying sunlight.

“No, I’m not.”

He is. Soonyoung definitely is.

 

Neither of them talk about any future plans—or talk about the fact that they both managed to book rooms in the exact same hotel—but the next day, Soonyoung shows up at Wonwoo’s door, and Wonwoo lets him in for some breakfast without a word of complaint, and they compare schedules to see what tourist traps they’ve signed up for.

It’s strange, really, the way their minds both work. How they both automatically came to the conclusion that they should spend their time on Shulsaga together. It just seems … natural.

The docks don’t really end in Shulsaga. Most of the land near the Erra’Ukur is soft, swampy marshes, so the wooden piers that extend out into the river also stretch out to form streets and roads, the houses built on stilts and hover platforms so they won’t sink into the orange mushy earth. Soonyoung and Wonwoo clomp up and down these wooden streets, visiting gift shops and taking selfies with dumb hats and useless baubles. Wonwoo’s back to wearing his glasses again, the solid and firm brown a comforting sight after that violent cybernetic green. Soonyoung tries them on at one point, amazed at how they just make his own vision blurry and unfocused.

“So let me get this straight,” Wonwoo says, eyes wide as they walk away from a shaved ice parlour, sweet syrups and chewy tapioca and crunchy Shulsaga berries still sitting sticky and thick on their tongues and the back of their teeth. “Your entire country was a factory? Did you guys … like … _live_ in them?”

“No, it’s not like that.” Soonyoung laughs. “It’s a factory _town._ We had schools and buildings and residential areas and stuff, too, it’s just that unless you were part of a restaurant or a clothing line or whatever to keep the wheels spinning, you became a spacecraft engineer. You made parts or, or designed new equipment, or tested flight simulations or something. The lucky ones got to become aeronauts and move to Japan or China to join the EU’s navy or research teams or whatever, like your parents probably did.”

“But—but—a whole _country?_ I mean, what if you didn’t want to work in a factory? What if you wanted to do something different?”

“Then you were shit out of luck. You had to apply for citizenship in some other country and hope the papers let you start over again somewhere else. Or maybe get your piloting license and become an inter-galaxy UPS guy or something, I dunno.”

“Is that what you were going to end up doing?” Wonwoo asks, and Soonyoung’s surprised to hear the vulnerability in his voice, the utter horror this New Terren human has, all for the idea that Soonyoung might’ve grown up to amount to nothing more than another link in some factory belt’s chain.

He shrugs. He’s used to it by now. It may seem weird to someone who’s never seen Earth before, but to him, it’s just home. “I mean, probably. My parents worked in the factories. My grandparents did. My cousins did. My sister did.”

“You would’ve become a factory worker?”

“Yeah, wasn’t smart enough to be a physicist.”

“In that case, I’m glad you left to go adventuring.”

The conviction is there, embedded in Wonwoo’s firm baritone and the gleam of his dark eyes. Soonyoung coughs and turns away, heat trailing up his cheeks and ears. He feels a sudden urge to take Wonwoo’s hand, where it dangles enticingly at his side. He shoves his own deep into the pockets of his jeans, instead, to fight off the desire.

“So am I.” He grins crookedly, in an attempt to make a joke and save them from the somber atmosphere. “Maybe I should become a writer too, hey? I’ve visited enough planets by now to write a book _._ Shouldn’t be too hard.”

Wonwoo snorts. “You sound like someone who has never written a book before.”

“True, and _ouch._ What’s so hard about writing a book?”

Wonwoo laughs a little, his boots making a satisfying stomping sound every time he takes a step. The sun is beating down on them, high and unforgiving. Off in the horizon, Soonyoung can still make out gondolas and fishing boats and cruise ships sailing across the magnificent river, little golden honey drops lighting the water like fireflies in a dusky sky. They might have to double back and return to the cooler docks, now that it’s grown so hot.

“Everything, really. Discipline. Planning. Preparation. Spontaneity. You need to know what makes something interesting and what doesn’t. What you have to cut out of a story because it doesn’t work, even if you really want it to. You have to know how to write characters that can make people laugh or cry, or how to write passages that can sound so beautiful and profound they want to read it again and again. You have to …” Wonwoo sees the way Soonyoung is staring at him with a half-smile on his face and he blushes, turning away with a self-conscious snort. “You have to know how to ramble like an idiot, apparently.”

“No, I like it,” Soonyoung says quickly. “You’re right, there’s so much more to writing a book than I thought. I think I’d probably write a chapter and get bored.”

Wonwoo stares at him for a few moments, cheeks still a little pink. “Like what?”

“What?”

“You—you said, ‘I like it’. You like what?”

“I …”

Soonyoung pauses. What _did_ he mean when he said he liked it? What did he like? Wonwoo’s rambling? His passion for his craft?

“Man, I dunno what the hell I was saying,” he stammers, rattled. “Do I look like I have complete control over my speech faculties?”

To his immense relief, Wonwoo laughs, some of that delicious pink dissipating from his features and bringing them back to a cooler tone. “You should get your translator chip checked out.”

“Fuck you, _you_ should get your translator chip checked out.”

They both snort at that, shielding their eyes from the sun. The weirdness is gone. All that’s left is the way the light hits the orange of the earth and makes it look livid and alive, like a roiling sea of magma, and the way it makes their skin glow form the inside-out.

They spend the next few days this way, visiting different cities and various Shulsaga attractions. Then, one day, Soonyoung heads over to Wonwoo’s room only to find out that he’s not there. The staff at the hotel let him know that he took a taxi to the airport only a few hours ago.

Soonyoung doesn’t mind.

They’ll see each other again.

 

The space port Soonyoung reaches next is a small thing, a gas station on the interstellar highways of warp speed travel. Even so, to his human eyes he finds it enormous, far too large for him to explore completely in only a day, and due to the fact that it’s one of the few ports outside of Earthen Union-sanctioned space that contains a Kenzo, it’s also a surprisingly popular tourist spot for humans.

The port’s real name is in a language too alien for Soonyoung to pronounce, but on Earth it’s always been known as the Goonies. From what Soonyoung’s heard, the first human to ever set foot in the port and write a guidebook about it named it after his favourite movie. It’s an impossibly stupid explanation for a name, but like every other stupid name in the galaxy, nobody else has tried to change it (fucking _Dirtball,_ god, Soonyoung will never get over it), and so he doesn’t take a moment to think about its absurdity as he heads towards the Goonie’s central plaza.

Wonwoo is standing in line for Kenzo Ramen with about fifty other humans, probably all the humans currently on this shithole of a port. He cut his hair in the two and a half weeks since they last saw each other, and now it’s slicked back away from his forehead. He looks unbearably handsome.

Soonyoung can’t even pretend to feel surprised anymore—it just seems natural that Wonwoo will be here. Soonyoung’s here, so of course he should be, too.

“Craving ramen?” he asks, sidling up to Wonwoo’s side and effectively cutting the line. A few customers grumble behind him, but they’re very easy to ignore when Wonwoo flashes him a nose-crinkle smile that seems extra-blinding today.

“Craving _anything_ human, really.” Wonwoo’s wearing a brown leather bomber jacket, and he shoves his hands deep into the pockets. His glasses are a little crooked. Soonyoung wants to reach out and straighten them, but doesn’t. “Weird, huh? A spacer, a cabin baby, craving food that came from a planet he’s never actually seen.”

Soonyoung wonders about that. As fun as it is wandering the galaxy, he knows in his heart that he will always be an Earth kid. He even has the documents to prove it—if he were to die out in space, the Intergalactic Alliance is legally obliged to send his body back to his home planet for cremation. The dirt and rocks and oil-stained streets and polluted skies of humanity’s origin story is built into the fibres that make up Soonyoung’s skin and bones.

And Wonwoo? Wonwoo is stardust and nebula ice, condensed into a physical form. The skies he looked up at in his childhood were massively different from Soonyoung’s. He may be human, species-wise, but there’s something distinctly alien in him.

He belongs to the universe more than Soonyoung ever will.

Soonyoung kind of wonders if Wonwoo would look down on Earth, on the simple humans and their overcrowded little planet, laugh at their insignificance against the sheer vastness of the galaxy. He already knows about Soonyoung’s pitiful, dirty country, and the life he might’ve had if he stayed. Maybe he’ll only ever think of Soonyoung as some kind of poor factory rat, trying desperately to escape the inevitable. He finds himself feeling more than a little self-conscious at the idea.

They order their dishes—Wonwoo gets _karashi_ ramen, Soonyoung gets _tonkotsu_ —and they bring their trays to a two-seater table to eat together. Soonyoung tries some of Wonwoo’s soup and whines at the spiciness, Wonwoo laughs and steals his swirly pink-and-white _narutomaki_ fish cake, and they watch through the plaza’s enormous glass walls as ships leave their docks and carry passengers to and from the port.

Talk turns to their childhood, or more specifically, the trouble they got into in their childhood. Soonyoung tells him about the zero-g training he went through at school and the time he almost threw up in front of the entire tenth grade class. Wonwoo tells him about the time he stole a voyager ship with his friends and nearly made it through New Terren’s atmosphere before they got caught.

“Where were you planning to go?” Soonyoung asks, fascinated.

Wonwoo’s lips curl into a crooked smirk. “There’s this _really_ great ice cream place on a port a few light years away. We thought we knew enough about ships to get there and back safely.”

“ _Could_ you?”

“Honestly? Not at all. We were sixteen and big-headed and thought we knew everything. We probably would have gotten killed.”

Soonyoung’s instantly concerned at the idea that Wonwoo could have died before they ever even met, but Wonwoo just laughs at the memory.

“I was thinking of finding the best bar in this oily joint and trying some of that Cotta Liqueur again,” Wonwoo says when they finish their meal and give their trays to a passing cleaning bot, “wanna come with?”

Soonyoung wasn’t planning on staying. There’s a passenger ship leaving the Goonies in about half an hour, and he knows someone on the next planet he’s visiting that has a warm bed for him to sleep in, not a cold, itchy cot in one of the shitty port hotels.

“I’ll treat you,” Soonyoung finds himself saying instead. “For real, this time.”

Wonwoo’s lips stretch into a smile, wide and cat-like and curled. “Good,” he says. “I’m planning on getting hammered.”

The port’s bar is not as grand or dramatic as the holographic-neon sights of Proserpina’s Central Titus. It’s metallic and grimy and full of all sorts of grizzly, ruffled aliens that Soonyoung can only describe in the human terms of “redneck”. The Cotta Liqueur in the Goonies is not as rich as the bottles in Central Titus, but it does the trick. He pays for the drink with a flash of his porta-phi and a quick transfer of credits. Within about two glasses, a healthy red flush rises in Wonwoo’s cheeks, and Soonyoung nearly falls flat on his face when he gets up to use the restroom.

Even through an increasingly-fuzzy alcoholic haze and the harsh, ugly lights that make their skin look mottled and yellowish-grey, Wonwoo looks dazzling. He throws his head back when he laughs, a carefree laugh that makes Soonyoung fumble his drink and stare maybe a bit too much at the way the veins in his neck shift.

“Wanna dance?” Wonwoo suddenly asks.

Soonyoung forces himself back down into reality. “What?”

“Dance!” He laughs again, eyes bright like star-flashes, brilliant and alive, an alien in human skin. “C’mon, I love this song.”

Soonyoung lets himself get pulled up to his feet, stumbling a little before he catches his balance. He follows Wonwoo out to the dance floor, where a surprising number of passengers in the port have congregated. It looks like the bar is the only place for everyone to drink away the griminess of the space port, to hide away on the dance floor until the oil spills and rumbling pipes half-bare in the walls and ceilings.

“I’m not good at dancing,” Wonwoo warns him as they face each other. The lights flashing on the dance floor outline him in golden, dying his skin unbelievable shades of purple and blue.

“Then why did you ask me?” Soonyoung asks, grinning.

“I dunno.” Wonwoo shrugs. The music pulses through them like a physical sensation. “I just felt like it.”

Wonwoo really isn’t that good at dancing. Soonyoung’s seen worse, of course, but Wonwoo is just … stiff. A little awkward. He does his best, though, and has a pretty decent flow with the beat of the song. Soonyoung fights back laughter and follows along, feeling light and floaty and dream-like.

“You’re _good_ at dancing,” Wonwoo says, sounding baffled around his disbelieving laughter. “What the fuck?”

“I’m good at everything, man,” Soonyoung taunts.

“Maybe Earth kids are just naturally better at dancing.”

“Maybe cabin babies are just naturally more liable to make excuses.”

“How dare you, I didn’t even feel real gravity until I was, like, three.”

They’re close enough to almost be dancing together, if they wanted. Soonyoung sees others on the dance floor, couples, men and women, women and women, men and men, anything and everything and nothing in-between. He sees the way they’ve got hands on waists, on shoulders, on backs. He wants that. He wants to be able to touch Wonwoo like that.

“Hey,” Soonyoung says with a carefree laugh, liquid courage coursing through his veins and his heart pounding against his ribs. “Hey, you know, why don’t I have your number yet?”

Wonwoo pauses, tense limbs hesitating mid-weird dance. “What was that?” he says, over the music.

“Your number! I mean, we’ve run into each other so many times, it’s practically fate, right?”

Soonyoung looks up at Wonwoo, up at his flushed cheeks and tilting glasses and how his hair is starting to curl out of its perfectly gelled formation. And he realizes he might be in love. He might be a little bit in love with how cautious and careful Wonwoo is, how brave and reckless he is, how he was born in space and has never seen Soonyoung’s boring old planet and Soonyoung’s boring old life. How he has this way of smiling that makes Soonyoung feel like the entirety of Central Titus is trying to crawl its way into his heart and explode. How his porta-phi is orange, and it’s something so miniscule and insignificant and yet so, so important to what makes up Wonwoo’s character, who he is, and Soonyoung realizes he doesn’t want this to just be a coincidence anymore, an impossible possibility. He wants Wonwoo to be something more in his life, something other than another spacefaring traveler. And he glows with it, chest swelling with emotion, because _this_ is what he’s been looking for, he’s sure of it, and he’s sure of Wonwoo. This is what he’s been searching for all this time.

“It’s fate,” he repeats with a silly, stupid grin on his face.

He watches as Wonwoo’s own smile freezes in place, hardens, then melts, sliding slowly away to reveal a stricken expression.

“Soonyoung, I—” Wonwoo hesitates, biting down on his lower lip. “I don’t know if that’s—a good idea.”

Soonyoung stares at him. At the way Wonwoo is starting to shrink away from him, space and airless void generating between them. At the way Wonwoo’s eyebrows knit together, mouth twisting into a hard line, eyes regretful and downcast.

Suddenly, everything feels wrong.

“What—why not?” His voice doesn’t sound like his. It sounds like it belongs to a stranger—an unhappy, confused, inhuman stranger, with twisted vocal cords and broken lungs. “What’s so bad with that?”

“I just—I—” Wonwoo winces, curling in on himself. He doesn’t look like attractive, strong-willed Jeon Wonwoo, the New Terren spacer, the cabin baby, the author with the strong jaw and ridiculous old-fashioned glasses. He looks like a ghost in a bomber jacket. “It’s been fun like this, right? We’ll see each other again, somewhere … somewhere else. It doesn’t have to be now, right? It doesn’t have to be … a-a _thing._ ”

“I … oh. Oh.” Soonyoung’s aware of how cold and dirty the bar is, how empty space is. The interstellar highways are long and vast roads, and yet nothing seems to exist besides this tiny little space port. “Oh.”

“It’s not like that,” Wonwoo starts to say, although it sounds very much _like that._ “It’s—I—it’s just, we’re too _different,_ you know? I mean, I’m some nobody from New Terren, and you’re, you’re an adventurer. A traveller. It’s just, I’ll just be a port in a storm, so what difference would it make? You know?”

“What _difference?”_ Soonyoung repeats, almost affronted. “Wuh-what the hell is that even supposed to mean? So we’re a little different, so what? It doesn’t—it doesn’t matter.”

“Soonyoung, I just—I _can’t._ I’m sorry.”

He starts to step back.

“Hold on,” Soonyoung says frantically, “it doesn’t have to be this way. I—if you don’t want to exchange numbers, it’s fine. Okay? It’s all good.” He’s painfully aware that his voice is starting to sound pleading. Desperate. Pitiful. “That’s fine. But we can still have fun tonight, right? Before we go … our separate ways.” Just a few more hours. He only needs a few more hours. He can’t say goodbye like this.

Wonwoo shakes his head, looking almost fearful. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. He keeps backing away.

“Wonwoo—” _Please don’t say goodbye like this._

“See you, Soonyoung,” he mumbles. He barely moves his lips.

And then the space between them grows large enough for a group of large, snuffling aliens to push their way through. And by the time they pass by completely, Wonwoo is walking away, shaking hands hidden far below in his pockets, shoulders hunched, head down.

Soonyoung watches him leave, equal measures regretful and heartbroken. He should never have opened his fucking mouth.

He drinks an entire bottle of Cotta by himself that night.

 

Lee Jihoon lives on Xi Rang, a small but heavily populated planet in the Jade Dragon cluster. It reminds Soonyoung very much of Earth, especially the city Fenghuang, with the crawling skyscrapers dotted with neon lights, the tangled and criss-crossing streams of wires and cables connecting the buildings like everyone’s afraid they might float away if they’re not tethered down. Cars zip overhead, ruffling Soonyoung’s hair and leaving behind a faint stench of exhaust from some of the older models. He uses his arms as a form of foolish cover from the black-stained water droplets dripping down on his head from god-knows-where, squeezing through tight alleyways and along crowded streets until he reaches his friend’s apartment.

Jihoon used to live on Earth too, once upon a time. Quite frankly, Xi Rang doesn’t seem like a huge upgrade—but maybe the fact that his neighbours are all aliens and his job is accounting— _but in space_ —and Xi Rang is, ultimately, not Earth at all somehow makes a difference.

Soonyoung likes Jihoon. He’s a constant in a universe of variables. When he opens the door, he’s still a good few centimetres shorter than Soonyoung, mouth set in neutral frown and eyes pinched with tiredness. But he smiles when he sees Soonyoung, and they give each other a hug, and Soonyoung kicks off his shoes and sinks into Jihoon’s couch like he owns the place.

“Been a while,” Jihoon remarks, grabbing him a beer from the fridge. It’s alien-make, something written in curving letters that seem to move if Soonyoung stares at them for too long, but it has a good, clean taste and is even a little citrusy. “How’s your, uh, cross-galaxy field trip coming along?”

“Good. Fine.” Soonyoung takes a long sip. It’s fresh, but definitely no Cotta in terms of alcohol levels. “Been seeing lots of cool things.”

“Mm-hmm.” Jihoon’s voice is suspiciously mild. “You aren’t, uh, thinking of settling down on any of those planets yet?”

Soonyoung gives him a dirty look. “You’ve been talking to my mom, haven’t you?”

“She called me!” Jihoon raises his hands, a universal what-can-you-do gesture. “She just wants to know if you’re doing okay. You should really give her a call, y’know. She’s _your_ mom.”

Soonyoung wriggles uncomfortably. “I was going to! I mean, I will! I—look, I’ll call her soon, okay? I just … I know she’s gonna ask me questions when I do, and I haven’t figured out the answer yet.”

“It’s not like she’s ordering you to go back to Earth and waste your life in a factory, Soonyoung,” Jihoon says, looking unimpressed. Of course he is. He’s living on a different planet with a different, non-factory job. He’s essentially living Soonyoung’s dream. “I mean, Christ. All she’s asking is for you to find somewhere to settle down. There’s literally, like, a thousand planets out there that’s habitable for humans. Pick one.”

“It’s not—I will. Just, not yet.” He’s dreading the phone call. He thinks if he sees his mother’s face lit up by his porta-phi’s cold green glow, hear that worried tone as her voice gets fainter and her hair gets greyer. He knows she’ll hide her intent behind questions about his health, his feelings, his friends and travels. He wants to ease her worries, even just a little bit—but she wants something he’s not sure he can provide right now, and with the way he and Wonwoo parted ways back on the Goonies a few days ago, it’ll likely by a while before he can give her any satisfaction.

Jihoon narrows his eyes at him, but blessedly moves on. “Where did you go?”

“Uhh, let’s see.” Soonyoung counts on his fingers. “Proserpina, Shulsaga, the Goonies. After this, I’m thinking of heading down Iota-Three, y’know, stop wherever I fancy.”

“Iota-Three?” Jihoon snorts. “That highway’s got nothing but museums and water parks and war monuments. Wouldn’t you rather go down somewhere like Beta-Nine? Y’know, somewhere with better hotels and space ports with _real_ food?”

“The Beta highways are boring. Everyone and their mother takes a ship down Beta-Nine for Christmas. I wanna go down a road less travelled.” Also, Wonwoo seems more like he’d visit the planets along the Interstellar Highway Iota-Three, but that’s not something Jihoon needs to know.

“Right.” Jihoon doesn’t look like he believes him one bit. Soonyoung very firmly stares at his beer bottle. Black-red rain drips down the side of the apartment windows, staining it like dried blood. By morning, it’ll all be washed off by Fenghuang’s automatic cleansing system (Earth really needs to get themselves one of those), but tonight, it feels grim and foreboding. “How long you gonna stay?”

“How long _can_ I stay?”

“I’ve known you since you were four, Soonyoung, I can’t exactly kick you out.” Jihoon sinks into a cheap armchair that bends even under his meagre weight, switching the TV on with a flick of his wrist against his stark red porta-phi house controls. “That being said, if you’re still hanging around here in two weeks, you’ll have to start paying rent.”

Soonyoung laughs, because Jihoon is familiar. Jihoon is comfortable. He’s safe. His cozy apartment in the dingy soot-cloud-covered Fenghuang will always be here to stay.

He sits and watches TV until he feels his brain rot.

 

He leaves Xi Rang a few days later, almost a whole week earlier than he planned. He tries to pretend it’s because he’s excited to see what Iota-Three has to offer. He knows it’s because he wants to see Wonwoo again.

He reaches his first space port and looks around eagerly for any sight of a tall human with dark hair and glasses, but he doesn’t find anyone.

His stomach lurches. _Calm down,_ he tells himself. _Space ports are big places. You’ll find him soon enough. Apologize. Say you didn’t mean it; you were just joking. Make everything alright again._

 _You never found him before,_ a part of him whispers back. _You just ran into him._

He stands, in the middle of the arrivals area, for hours. He sees pink-skinned aliens with wide-set, gaping holes that he can’t really call eyes. He sees grey creatures that are chiseled and formed like boulders, slowly lumbering their way along with steps that shake the floor. Monkey-like aliens covered in bristled brown fur and stinger-like tails wrapped up for spaceship safety protocols, stuffy green aliens with bulbous limbs carrying purses with little teacup-sized puppies chewing on the zipper, slinking chameleon-like aliens with painted beaks and scales that shimmer like gossamer rainbows with every movement.

No Wonwoo.

By the time the last ship leaves the docking station and the arrivals area empties, Soonyoung’s calves and soles of his feet are aching, and he’s forced to come to the realization that Wonwoo really isn’t here. He’s not on this port. No coincidences. No miraculous meetings. No luck.

What are the odds?

 _It wasn’t that you found him,_ that voice sighs, as he turns around and starts heading back to his hotel. _It wasn’t that you ran into him. He found you too, he ran into you, too. You_ both _found each other._

Guess the universe stopped caring once one of them didn’t want to be found anymore.

 

He takes a break halfway through his planned Iota-Three trip and returns to Xi Rang, suddenly exhausted, suddenly desperately sick and tired of sitting in those goddamn ships.

He stays with Jihoon for almost two months, reluctant to leave. Jihoon doesn’t seem to mind—Soonyoung helps with the rent, after all—but by the time he starts going on a couple dates with some Fenghuang banker called Junhui, he begins making more and more obvious hints that Soonyoung should probably head out, for the sake of everyone’s privacy.

Eventually, he does. He opens up a map of the Interstellar Highway Iota-Three on his porta-phi, closes his eyes, shoves his finger against a spot, and takes the next ship to that planet.

Several months pass.

 

He visits the garden planet Hesiod, just one of the many countless planets he’s visited so far. He’s been staying at each destination longer and longer, too tired to move on right away.

Hesiod is nice enough for him to want to stay forever. Almost, anyways. The hotel Soonyoung booked isn’t a particularly fancy one, but it feels like a five-star resort the way it’s built into a mountain covered with thick green grass and trees, a roaring waterfall of crystal-clear water thundering down a steep side of the mountain and generating a cool mist.

Soonyoung visits the Ceto Pools, underground cave lakes so clear they reflect the glow of the crystals and geodes embedded into the roof of the cave, giving the impression that he’s floating on a boat in the middle of space. He goes to the Rhea gardens, massive public parks filled with flowering trees in pink and blue, benches and lampposts covered in kudzu-like vines, mossy stone paths that lead out to bridges that cross rivers speckled with fragile water lilies. It’s beautiful, and he takes lots of pictures to show his mother and sister later, but it all feels sort of hollow. The magic is gone. He’s going through the motions of being a typical tourist, instead of genuinely enjoying the wonders the galaxy has to offer him.

Pathetic, really, to think he’d ever have a chance with Wonwoo. Practically a stranger. Did he really think he was special, because of some ridiculous coincidence that threw the two of them into each other? Did he really think the universe cared at all about two meaningless little humans, that they had somehow kept meeting each other because they _belonged_ together?

It’s pathetic. It really is. It’s foolish, a kind of starry-eyed sentiment his sister might’ve sighed over in high school. It’s not something a man reaching his thirties should be so hung up over.

That being said, he passes by a bookstore and a certain title catches his eye. More specifically, the name of the author does.

He rushes into the store, ignoring the startled look on the employers’ faces, when he says, “That book—do you have that for a phi-reader?”

Soonyoung spends a ridiculous amount of credits buying all of Wonwoo’s books, and spends the rest of the afternoon and evening curled up on his hotel bed, scrolling through them on his porta-phi.

Wonwoo’s earliest works were simple, heartfelt things—two were set in New Terren, while a popular trilogy was set on a ship that feels similar to everything he once told Soonyoung about his life on the _Thousand Voyages._ The next book was set on Proserpina, a detective noir-style novella that revelled in the lights and sounds of the planet, the activities, the music and attractions of Central Titus, the seedier underbelly of the capital crime city Fraus, the beautiful and scheming women in white who run Proserpina’s grand pavilion Magna Dea. The story itself was intriguing enough, the ideas unique and captivating, but the characters and writing were lacking and it didn’t sell nearly as well as Wonwoo’s earlier books.

Soonyoung can tell why, when he skims the paragraphs. Wonwoo was clearly struggling to write about a world he’s never actually experienced first-hand. What he was writing about was an imagined version of Proserpina, an idolized creation, a half-formed ghost created by reading travel brochures and tourist reviews.

There was a long break after that last book. The next one, Soonyoung’s surprised to find, was released recently. Only a few weeks ago, in fact; it probably explains why he saw it in the bookstore’s window display.

It’s completely different from the epics and novels Wonwoo was writing before. This one is a collection of short stories, all set in the liminal space and semi-unreality that are space ports. It was a roaring success—every story centered on a different character, all staying in the same space port for various reasons, and how they interact with both each other and the environment around them. It’s charming, it’s insightful, it’s funny and heartbreaking in equal measures.

And in every single short story, Soonyoung sees himself.

It’s not obvious, of course. But somehow, when he reads it, he knows exactly where he is. He’s the janitor with the twinkle in his eye that’s calibrating a cleaning bot. He’s the child with almond-shaped eyes that hugs a random stranger. He’s the laughing man that disappears in a crowd. The VI system that unexpectedly becomes a source of comfort for a lonely woman waiting to board a delayed ship. He’s the quirky Arah bartender and the cat that befriends the port’s unappreciated staff and the brilliant, wildly charming space-faring traveller and he’s everywhere, _everywhere_ in Wonwoo’s writing, and it’s only when he chokes out a laugh through his tears does he realize he’s even crying at all.

He pours himself a glass of plain, old-fashioned human wine, wipes his tears, and looks through the comments for the _Common Traveller’s Anthology._ Everyone praises Wonwoo’s improvement in writing and storytelling, all clamouring for a new novel soon. Some are even claim he’s the best talent that’s ever come out of New Terren so far.

Soonyoung’s breath hitches around a small sob. This, strangely, feels more like a goodbye than anything Wonwoo’s ever said in person.

 

When they meet again, it comes as such a surprise Soonyoung almost doesn’t realize it’s happening.

It’s a space port, of _course_ it is, it’s practically a given that they’d meet in an unimportant, nameless port. They literally run into each other—Soonyoung’s staring at his porta-phi, aimlessly deciding whether it’s worth it to grab something to eat or just go to the departures area and wait for his ship, when he slams straight into someone’s chest and makes a ridiculous “oof” noise, stumbling backwards and snapping his head up.

“I—oh.”

Wonwoo stares at him, still in those familiar round glasses, his hair cut neat and crisp, a total opposite from the shaggy mess when they first met. He’s even wearing a _suit._

“Sorry,” Soonyoung says, aware that his growing smile probably looks as awkward as it feels. He desperately wants to pretend everything’s okay, that nothing hurts, that he’s fine with it and it’s over and he doesn’t even care because everything between them ended before it could even begin. “It’s good to see you again, Wonwoo. Uh, how’ve you been?”

“Um.” Wonwoo stammers for a few seconds, face slowly morphing into a cherry-red horror. “Uh. Soonyoung. Hey.”

He doesn’t answer the last bit. Soonyoung’s not sure if he did it on purpose or not.

“You, uh—” Wonwoo quirks his lips into an unconvincing smile. “You still out on adventures?”

“Yeah. You know me.” Soonyoung laughs, hollow. “Always out adventuring. This is just a short stop, as usual, my ship’s leaving in about fifteen minutes. I, um, I visited Hesiod a few weeks ago. Real pretty place. You would’ve liked it.”

“Right. Yeah. Well, maybe I’ll go one day.” Wonwoo’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. It feels plastic, almost as dead as this fake conversation. “I had to go back to New Terren after the Goonies. Publisher … reasons. But I, um, I think I’ll have to take another vacation soon. For inspiration.”

“Oh. Right.” He fidgets. It’s too weird; he needs to escape. “Well, it’s nice to see you again. Maybe I’ll, uh, I'll read your next book when it comes out.”

He turns to walk away as fast as possible, but Wonwoo stops him. “Wait! W-wait. I, um, I want to explain myself. For what I said to you back on the Goonies. I—it was really shit of me, and I panicked, and I just wanted to tell you why. Even if the answer is dumb.”

“Oh.” Soonyoung wishes he can say something else. He feels so stupid, his brain empty and stuffed with cotton. “I—alright. Sure. Yeah. I’m listening.” Why does he sound so useless?

Wonwoo fidgets, fingers fiddling with the cuffs of his jacket. He looks so ridiculously attractive in the suit, like he just finished up with an interview or (most likely) a book signing, before heading back home.

It’s entirely unfair, Soonyoung thinks dismally, that he should look so good during such a painful time.

“I, um,” Wonwoo stutters, porta-phi flashing candy-orange by his twitching fingers faster than Soonyoung can blink. “I have this issue with … I can’t see the bigger picture. Most of the time. It’s why my editor and publisher kicked me off New Terren and got me to start travelling, actually _see_ the places I’m writing about. I was never someone who could just imagine a place and write it. I … I get stuck inside my own head. Buried under fiction plotlines and metaphors and symbolism, I write only about what I know, what I’ve experienced myself. That’s what I do best. And you, you felt the same to me.”

“I felt the same what?”

“Like … like … out of reach. The same way I fucked up my story about Proserpina because I’ve never been there before. I’m in my own head, I can’t see what’s out there. You’re—you’re—you’re _out there,_ all on your own, travelling to all sorts of different planets because you don’t want to stay on Earth anymore. You could just leave, just like that, to go travelling across the galaxy. And I can’t. And … and I’m just this guy, this dumb author trying to do what he loves but also make enough money to live, and that first night you saw me, in Central Titus, that was the first time I’ve ever so much as left New Terren’s atmosphere. You’re all the way out there, and I’m just, I’m stuck. I’m stuck down on the ground, in my head, and when you said that thing about fate, I freaked out, because I just couldn’t see how any of it could be fated. I couldn’t see the bigger picture.”

Soonyoung stares. He stares and stares and stares, unsure of what kind of expression he’s even got on his face. Because all this time, he thought Wonwoo might be looking down on him, might think of him as the oil-streaked factory rat, the Earth kid, the spacer wannabe that he really is. Wonwoo thought he was someone unreachable, someone that flew with the shooting stars.

He thinks of Earth, the way the smog-tinted sun flashed against the glass domes protecting the river close to his apartment and how it hasn’t snowed in Korea for almost thirty-seven years. He thinks of his best friend Jihoon, the Jihoon who escaped, who escaped to a different kind of prison where it rains ink and breathes in car exhaust mixed with neon.

“That’s funny.”

Wonwoo cringes at that, like he expects Soonyoung to say it more harshly, like he expects the _that’s funny_ to sound more like a _fuck you._ “Why’s that?”

“You wanna know the truth?” Soonyoung says quietly. “These aren’t adventures. Let’s be real, Wonwoo, they’re tourist activities. They’re—they’re gondola rides and art museums and public gardens. They’re movie theatres and cheap hotels. I didn’t leave Earth because I _like_ shit like that. I left Earth because I felt like garbage down there. It wasn’t the pollution, or the crowds, or the factories. I sucked at all my courses in school. I failed my zero-g training and my piloting license. I felt small and useless and stupid. I couldn’t do anything right. I was never smart or strong or cool enough to do or be anything important. And I wanted— _so badly_ —to be somebody important. And I left Earth because if I thought I went far enough way, saw enough things, I might find something that makes me feel like I belong. That makes me feel worth it.”

Wonwoo’s eyes are wide. He opens his mouth, then closes it, unable to say anything. That’s fine. Soonyoung didn’t tell him all that so he can get some sort of pity speech.

“So—” he chokes on his words a bit, a bitter smile crawling up his face. “So yeah, it’s fun wandering the galaxy. But it’s not as cool as you seem to think it is. It’s lonely as hell, you don’t get to make many close friends, and you leave each planet with less credits and nothing to really show for. It doesn’t last forever, either. I’m starting to run out of funds. I’d say I have … one or two more planets worth of travelling, tops, before I’m forced to settle down somewhere and find a shitty job to tide me over.”

“You won’t go home?” Wonwoo asks, voice so quiet it’s barely above a whisper.

No. Never. Soonyoung was born on Earth and will eventually be buried on Earth, but he’ll be damned before he lets himself spend the rest of his life miserable and meaningless on that tiny planet. He laughs humourlessly and says, “I’ll probably go to my friend, on Xi Rang. He can give me a place to stay, help find me a job. Fenghuang isn’t a bad city to hunker down for a couple years, build up my savings again.”

“Xi Rang? _Fenghuang?”_

“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

Wonwoo looks almost heartbroken. “Nothing. It’s just … it’s in the Jade Dragon Cluster.”

“Yeah?”

Wonwoo doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to. The Jade Dragon Cluster is far away from the Sixer Cluster. Not halfway across the galaxy or anything, but definitely no quick ship ride over, even with FTL technology. Far enough away to ruin any chance of future coincidences.

Soonyoung checks his internal timepiece chip again. “I … sorry, Wonwoo. I have to go. My ship’s leaving soon, and I need to head to departures. I’ll … see you around, I guess.”

He doesn’t wait for Wonwoo to say anything. He turns around and walks away, aware of a pair of eyes burning holes into the back of his head. He doesn’t turn back to check—he can’t do that to himself.

He reaches departures a little late, and quickly joins the long, winding line waiting to enter the docked ship just outside the curved, tinted windows. It’s better this way, maybe. They were just two strangers who randomly met in a bar and kept on meeting. It was fun, strange, different, magical in the way the universe is formed by ordered chaos and random events.

But it’s over. Soonyoung can stop looking around every five minutes, wondering if maybe he’ll see Wonwoo again. Wonwoo will return to New Terren, and by the time he goes off on another vacation, Soonyoung will probably be in Fenghuang with Jihoon, getting a dead-end job somewhere deep in the bowels of the city.

_“Soonyoung!”_

Wonwoo’s voice echoes across the entire gateway. Heads turn. Soonyoung twists around to see Wonwoo standing at the very edge of the gate, around the arches that lead back to the docking bay’s trailing hallways, back to the space port’s main body. His face is flushed and out of breath, hair a mess, tie crooked, glasses knocked askew. There’s something in his eyes that’s brighter, wilder than anything Soonyoung’s ever seen before, filled with something that makes Soonyoung’s chest tighten and his chin tremble.

“Won—” he starts to say, but Wonwoo cuts him off.

“I regretted it,” he says hastily, still struggling to catch his breath. “When I walked away from you in the Goonies, I regretted it. Every single day. I-I-I would wake up and get out of bed and think of you and regret everything I said that night. I wanted, more than _anything,_ but I was scared and stupid and you were so, so _interesting_ and _free_ and I felt, you made me feel so—”

“Wonwoo,” Soonyoung says, louder, now starting to grow embarrassed, even as his heart rate picks up and his porta-phi flickers against his wrist to tell him his pulse is skyrocketing. “Are you really doing this? Right now?”

It’s like they’re re-enacting some kind of dramatic, clichéd romance vid. All eyes are trained on them and the scene they’re making, some fighting back titters behind their hands, and the two of them are both so fucking _embarrassed_. Wonwoo’s blush is starting to deepen in colour and trail up to his ears, but he sets his jaw, like he’s fully prepared to traumatize the both of them with his anguished declarations.

“I just wanted to tell you that,” he says, weakly but still sort of half-yelling across the gateway and holy shit everyone’s looking and he needs to quiet _down._ “I wish I never said all that stupid shit and ran away, not when I realized how easy it could be for me to lose you. To just never see you again. A-and I, and I just wanted you to know that. That I really regret being so dumb and afraid, and I really do like you, and I—” his expression crumples, “—really, really don’t want you to leave right now.”

Oh, god. Fucking _hell._ Soonyoung takes one last look at the gateway, then walks over to him, face burning and shoulders hunched up in mortification.

Wonwoo looks more and more apprehensive as he approaches. His fingers reach up to shakily adjust his glasses, smooth at his hair, like he’s only just realized he looks like a mess. How long did he stand there, after Soonyoung left? How long did he wait? Did he decide first, or did he just start running, started moving his feet before he could even realize what he was doing?

“I-I know that’s really selfish of me to say,” he rambles on, “and probably ridiculous, considering you already paid for the ticket and everything. I just—it was in the heat of the moment, and I wasn’t thinking, and—”

“Just—just stop talking,” Soonyoung pleads, aware of the hundreds of faces turned in their direction, and pulls up his porta-phi. Wonwoo stares, open-mouthed, as Soonyoung scrolls through the green-outlined pages and cancels his ticket. Just like that. “I’ll get a partial refund, okay? It’s honestly whatever.”

“You’re staying back,” Wonwoo says, a little dumbstruck, like even after he practically begged Soonyoung not to go, he can hardly believe it.

Soonyoung lets out a frustrated sigh, hiding the fact that he thinks he might actually burst into tears right now. “Well, I can’t exactly leave _now,_ can I? Not when you asked me like that. I mean, fuck, Wonwoo. This is the worst, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“Right. Sorry. I just—” Wonwoo falters, a wobbly little smile stretching across his face. “I just didn’t want to make the same mistake again.”

“Again?”

“Yeah. Walking away from you. It was a mistake. Not again.”

They smile hopefully at each other, neither quite knowing what to do or say next. Not that there’s a time limit, Soonyoung thinks. Not anymore. If they follow this, without any fear or hesitation or self-doubt, they’ll be all right. The universe loves them, just like it loves everyone who’s willing to embrace its chaos and crazy coincidences and not look back, and the universe will make it all right. They won’t ever have to be afraid of leaving something behind again.

“So,” he says, “what’s the plan?”

“The plan?” Wonwoo blinks at him, almost owlishly. It’s weirdly hilarious, and so, so familiar. It’s like he’s relearning what makes Wonwoo so special all over again. “Since when have you cared about plans?”

“I’ve spent most of my life being spontaneous, I think it’s your turn for a change.”

“Well,” Wonwoo starts to say, hesitating, still smiling so freaking wide. “Well, for starters, I wonder if maybe you’d like to come see New Terren with me. Not to brag, but I’m _basically_ the closest thing they have to a celebrity right now, so I’m kind of a big deal.”

Soonyoung laughs, actually _laughs._ “Colour me intrigued, Big Deal. What kind of benefits come with that celebrity status?”

“A high-rise apartment in the middle of Dael, our capital city.” Wonwoo pretends to inspect his nails, rubbing them off on the lapels of his suit. “All-expenses-paid trips courtesy of my publishing company, so I can get inspired for future novels. I’d probably have to go on quite a few of those, here and there throughout the year. Perfect for me to bring along someone not too keen on settling down on a single planet just yet. And since New Terren is only about twenty-five years old and desperate for new immigrants, all those developing businesses would be _dying_ to hire and train anyone coming to live in Dael. Definitely not factory work.”

“That sounds … wow, that sounds perfect. You really thought this out.”

Wonwoo couldn't possibly know what he's offering Soonyoung. A life. A job. Meaning. A beautiful new planet, with fresh air and starry skies and fields of grass that humans won’t overpopulate and destroy for a thousand more years. Maybe this time they won’t—maybe they’ll be careful on New Terren, colonize other planets before the breaking point, maybe they’ll take care of their world this time. The chance to still escape, once in a while, to see the vast gorgeousness of space, but still with a home somewhere where he can bring his family to visit, where he can call his mom and not ever feel embarrassed by the living conditions. He can’t believe this is happening.

“Of course I did. Meticulous planning.” Wonwoo stands a little taller, a little straighter. His hands fall to his sides, gently, no longer fidgeting with his porta-phi. “It was for someone important.”

“So, are you guys gonna kiss?” someone yells from the line of disembarking passengers still staring at them.

 _“Shut up!”_ Soonyoung snaps, flustered. Wonwoo makes a strangled squeaking noise, realizing where they are and that everyone is still watching their emotional reunion. Together, the two of them scurry out of the gate and away from the docking bays, red-faced and heads down, avoiding all eye contact.


End file.
